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Welcome to Fearless Summer: Protesters Block Keystone XL Construction

ICTMN Staff

6/24/13

Eight people locked themselves to construction equipment early on Monday June 24 to inaugurate what the Tar Sands Resistance group has dubbed Fearless Summer, a series of protests against the Keystone XL pipeline and Alberta oil sands development in general.

Nine people were arrested in the civil disobedience action, according to NewsOK.com, chaining themselves to a work trailer and construction equipment outside Seminole, Oklahoma. By 9 a.m. much of it was over, with four people who had been chained to an excavator detaching themselves “for their own safety,” NewsOK.com reported.

“Eight individuals blocked construction of a pump station for TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline on Seminole land-by-treaty by locking on to equipment in the largest action yet by the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance,” the group said in a statement.

“The group took action today, physically halting the construction process, as a part of an effort to prevent the Great Plains from being poisoned by inherently dangerous tar sands infrastructure, as well as demonstrate the necessity for direct confrontation with industries that profit off of continued ecological devastation and the poisoning of countless communities from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf,” the group said. "This action comes during the first day of a nationwide week of coordinated anti-extraction action under the banner of Fearless Summer.”

Keystone XL is up for a decision this year, with the final environmental report still pending. Construction of pieces of the project has begun already, in anticipation of full approval.

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